According to my BP which is still high I guess I’m not relaxing yet. But I am trying. I read a chapter each in the two music books I am reading:  Listen to This by Alex Ross and Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to :Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty by Ben Ratliff.

Both authors refer to musical examples and inspired me to begin playlists of the stuff they refer to. Interestingly they both made reference to “Reminiscing in Tempo” by Duke Ellington.

“Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues” is the title of the Ross chapter.  Inspired by a lecture, Ross heard Ligeti give in 1993, it attempts a huge overview of the use of a repeated descending bass. Ellington’s piece barely qualifies. Ross describes it as “thirteen-minute jazz fantasia propelled by a short chromatic ostinato.” To my ears, the repetition is varied and hardly ever chromatic except between the 2nd and 3rd note.

But I still find the piece interesting since according to Ross “It was written in the wake of the  death the composer’s mother, but it keeps sorrow at bay…”

Ratliff is looking for more clarity about how listeners are thinking about the music to which they listen. He mentions Ellington’s piece in a chapter called “Let Me Concentrate! Repetition.” This chapter wasn’t quite what I was expecting. “Repetition often leads to length, to the expansion of an idea,” writes Ratliff, “The idea of dividing a recording into a ‘part one’ and ‘part two’ in order to accommodate and justify that expansion… began not as an aesthetic conceit but a necessity, when classical pieces were divided across sequential sides of 78 RPM records. In 1935, Duke Ellington imitated that convention with a curious, inward, lovely, thirteen-minute, four sided piece, Reminiscing in Tempo.”

Ratliff’s inspiration for this chapter and the source its title is the James Brown piece, “Aint it Funky!”

Around 5:03 in the video above, you can hear Mr. Brown say, “Let Me Concentrate!” Ratliff comments, “All good repetition in music is embodied by that demand: let me concentrate!” He then moves in to talking about Steve Reich’s famous piece Four Organs which is basically nothing but repetition.

I don’t find Ratliff very convincing so far as redefining how music can be and presumably is being listened to these days. Both authors make mistakes as they try to talk specific musical techniques.

Ratliff says that the James Brown band goes from 4/4 to 3/4 (around 6:42 in the video above). To my ears there is no true triple at this point. Rather it’s just funky off beats but still in a duple way. If you tap duple throughout the break he is talking about, it seems to be more the way the band is thinking about the rhythm to me.

Ross screws up when he looks at the cadential hemiola to the ground of Dido’s aria “When I am laid in earth.” He describes the ground as “notes… like a chilly staircase stretching out before one’s feet. In the fourth full bar there’s a slight rhythmic unevenness, a subtle emphasis on the second beat (one-two-three).” To my ears, it’s a perfectly elegant cadential close which in hemiolic fashion doubles the triple feel thus: 123/ 123 to 12 3/1 23.

Despite these mistakes, I am enjoying the hell out of these books. I especially like Ross’s wide ranging movement between musical styles. I identify with this.

If I think about it for a moment I suppose it’s not too weird that I’m still pretty stressed on the first day of vacation. I can’t help but think of Wile E. Coyote.

We arrived safely at the cabin last evening. I was exhausted. I got up this morning and tried to make coffee. It was awful. Studied some Greek. Played boggle with Eileen. My BP was up this morning. It may be a few days before I am able to actually relax. In the meantime I have to get used to not having something I have to do.

I brought my keyboard but forgot headphones. I can use the keyboard to put  music notes into my software, but playing it is a problem without headphones. Fortunately, my brother has promised to bring me some.

The internet connection (via my mobile phone hotspot) seems to be working fine. I saw a deer early this morning before Eileen got up. I’m listening to Shostakovich on my laptop via Spotify. Surely I will relax soon.

The Secret Power Behind Local Elections – The New York Times

Dark money (anonymous money) is the secret power.

India’s ‘Brexit’ Took More Than a Referendum – The New York Times

This puts a bit different perspective on Brexit.

Tony Blair: Brexit’s Stunning Coup – The New York Times

Blair continues to plead for the center. Not only is it not holding, however, it seems to be almost nonexistent.

The Supreme Court’s Silent Failure on Immigration – The New York Times

Greenhouse always has insights worth thinking about.

Hell Is Other Britons – The New York Times

This is one person’s lament about being stuck in his home town in England. Some of the behavior that is bugging him is recognizably British.

The Reaction to Brexit Is the Reason Brexit Happened | Rolling Stone

This seems to be a clear eyed look at how elites continue to abandon their constituency and then wonder why they vote the way they do. Though I haven’t finished reading this article I so admire Matt Taibbi’s way of looking at things that I bookmarked the next article to read that he wrote about Trump waaaaay back in Feb.

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable | Rolling Stone

I was visited by my dream daemons last night. When I was a young man, I wrote a short story called “Dreams in the Hands of Demons.” In it, I told a story based on the true fact that someone I knew as a child was hit by a car. She was thrown a long distance and was knocked out. She never regained full consciousness. I imagined what her inner life must have been like. Her demons were good old fashioned Baptist evil demons.

At the turn of the century I had a series of therapeutic dreams in which people in my dreams made helpful suggestions about the stress I was going through at my job. I  had an anxiety dream about doing Mass. Someone in the dream quietly asked me “What’s at stake?”  I woke up and asked myself the question and it eventually helped me get some perspective.

Since then (and some reading) I can see people in my dreams as daemons (roughly defined as a supernatural being somewhere between human and superhuman/godlike…. it’s a Greek thing).

Last night in my dream I was in a room with a lot of people. There were many things happening in the dream: discussions about books and music. I was looking for some music to go away from the situation and rehearse. A young woman I recognized came into the room and said without looking directly at me, “You know they’re beautiful.”

I understood her to be talking about my compositions. I asked her which ones. She replied, “All of them.” Just at this point I realized someone was in the next room performing one of my compositions on a piano. I don’t know which one, I just knew it was mine. I went into the room and discovered he was performing for two other people. I told him I was leaving. I think I was implying he was welcome to come with me.

There was more to this dream than I can remember, but it is an odd thing to have a daemon tell me that all of my music is beautiful. I think this is partly related to the conversation I had with my student about Joshua Bell’s teacher who he describes as never playing a note he didn’t love.

Yesterday in the lesson, my student had not practiced. We however went over one of his assignments, an Interlude by Brahms. I have been working on not picking him to pieces as he plays things for me. I had him play a page. Then play it again. There were some stumbles as he began to recall the piece which he basically knew but had not rehearsed. Before he played it the third time, I asked him to hum the melody as he played.

The third time was both more correct note wise and also musically more beautiful. At this point I mentioned Joshua Bell’s teacher’s love over every note. I told my student that when he hummed he allowed himself to enter into the music more and consequently got more of the details correct as well as playing it musically.

The “loving of every note” I interpret as entering deeply into the music with sheer enjoyment and awareness. For me this is an ideal of performing I seek (and often find myself experiencing). This sort of immersion helps when performing for inattentive noisy church crowds. So when I say “fuck ’em,” what I really mean is how beautiful this music is and what a privilege it is to make it just now.

When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers – The New York Times

This is along disturbing well investigated and reported piece about the damage privatizing can do to public services.

I have a busy day planned with lots of last minute details in prepping for leaving for vacation tomorrow. I’m planning to make pesto ahead; marinade the veggies for the Greek salad; grocery shop; get Mom ready for our absence by stocking her up with stuff; prep the church arena by submitting bulletin info, putting in for my sub’s check, posting the fucking hymns.

Eileen is having breakfast with the rest of the alto section this morning.

All this is to say today’s blog is short for these reasons.

How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic

I am put off when pundits lump together Trump and Sanders.  I haven’t finished this essay yet.

The large, beautiful wooden loom that resided in our dining room is gone. Jeff, Misty, and their daughter, Amanda, took it away. I arrived from practicing in time to help Jeff load the big clumsy pieces.  Afterwards, Eileen showered. Then she insisted on going for margaritas and Mexican food. I have learned to drink a margarita at the restaurant we go to. “When in Rome” is a good policy, since martinis often are a bit odd at the local Mexican joints.

The food is good and so are the margaritas when ingested with it. We had a pitcher  of them last night. Eileen drank most of it. I drove. Heh.

I am looking forward to getting out of town for some time away. We are going to Eileen’s family hunting cottage near Grayling. We have met there for many years with the extended Jenkins clan. We stopped doing it at Eileen’s request because she was feeling the stress of being the go between person between the two families, Jenkins and Hatch. I guess now that’s not the case.

I know that I am still suffering from work stress and burn out. I had high BP readings this morning. I think this might possibly be related to the fact that today is the last Sunday for our curates. The last few months working with them has been weird. It has strengthened my aversion for fakey Jesus stuff and dishonesty between people. Fuck the duck.

Today will be easy of course. But I’m not looking forward to it. I sent out an email to several people who have drummed for me before, inviting them to come today and play along on the first hymn. So far only one person bothered to respond and that was to beg off. As usual, people ask for more opportunities to involve parishioners in the music program, but when we get to specifics, they don’t have time or inclination. I take it as a sign of the times.

Speaking of the times, how about that Brexit?

My British family and friends have been very quiet about this on Facebooger. Americans not so much. And then there’s the ongoing saga of the Trump know nothing movement. Somehow Trump managed to make the Brexit story in America about him, his golf course, and his confusion about whether the people of Scotland “won” their country back. If you don’t know about this, they didn’t. Scotland recently had a vote on becoming entirely independent of England. This was voted down and the reason seems to have largely been remaining in the EU. Now Scotland is revisiting leaving England to maintain their EU status. This is apparently too complex for Knownothing Trump. As was the entire concept of Brexit when he was asked about it a few weeks back and it was obvious that he didn’t know what the fuck it was.

One can only agree with George Will as he scurries away from the imploding Republican presidential campaign and the part itself. Trump is an amateur. As well as a bigot, hater, demagogue, yada, yada.

I woke up in the night thinking about the music I am writing. I had some ideas about it (which I did remember this morning).

I also realized that if I wanted to submit some solid past compositions as part of an application for an AGO competition I do have some work that is strong in my opinion, both in the choral area and organ area. I forget all the stuff I have written. Ironically most of it is sitting right here on this web site. I am proud of my Psalm 146 for choir and organ, my Little Recessional for Organ, the Pentecost Suite for marimba and organ, my Jazz Mass. 

But it’s a bit late to come up with a good solid new choral and/or organ idea to be submitted by July 1. No matter. At least I’m writing again. I can only hope it persists. Making up stuff is something that makes me glad to be alive.

So does finding books to read. Yesterday when I was doing my Mom’s weekly library trip I ran across several books that would make good summer reads.

I found Alain de Botton’s The News: A User’s Manual in the large print section as I was scouring for books for my Mom in the small non-fiction section. I didn’t recognize the book but the topic is something I think about quite a bit. Cool.

After finding all the books for my Mom I wandered over to the new books section. New books sections in libraries have been my friends for a long time. I love browsing them. Hystopia is a novel within a novel. Both of them are set in an alternate universe where JFK was not assassinated until a seventh assassination attempt. The book within the book is written by a veteran of the Vietnam war (still raging in this alternate reality). The inside flap says something about this fictional author being in conversation with war narratives like Homer’s Iliad and the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” Cool.

Ben Ratliff has set out to write an updated How to Listen book. He moves past older ideas about music like genre and informed listening. Instead his discussion is divided up into chapters like “Let Me Concentrate! Repetition” and “As It First Looks: Improvisation.” I look forward this New York Times jazz and pop critic’s take on a complex time.

If the guy on the cover of this book reminds you of someone like Dmitri Shostakovich then you’re already on the right track for how this book works. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes uses Shostakovich’s life to tell a fictional story. I remember reading a review of this book. I was very glad to pick it up off the new shelf of my library.

Yay libraries!

Ralph Stanley, Whose Mountain Music Gave Rise to Bluegrass, Dies at 89 – The New York Times

I admit that I was only vaguely aware of this guy before his memorable appearance in “O Brother Where Art Thou?” Still I do love obits and this is a good one.

I am still thinking about what it means to sketch music daily. I knew an artist once who said that he felt that he must put a line on a piece of paper every day. This was his minimum.

Writers are always writing or talking about some sort of daily routine, often quantifying how many words a day they write.

I watch the word count on this blog and try to keep around 500 words (not counting comments on links).

It maybe that a daily foray into composing will not mean producing a little complete musical piece every day. I have found that it takes me days to come up with a coherent musical concept beginning with little flashes of inspiration. These flashes often seem to later be cleverly interlocked in ways I did not anticipate when thinking them up and writing them down.

So yesterday I wrote what seemed to be an A section of a short piece. This morning I decided to continue working on it. Yesterday when i finished, I began how I thought I wanted the A section to continue. This morning I finished that section and indicated what the contrasting B section will be like. Also I began to understand that the little exercise I am writing sounds a bit like a fucked up boogie. That might make a nice title. “Fucked up boogie”

I also think that part of daily sketching of compositional ideas needs to involve a little chunk of time. Yesterday I looked up after having come up with some ideas and not much time had passed. i resolved that if it takes me an hour or so sometimes to do this silly blog, I should spend at least a half hour working on a musical sketch. I went back to work and didn’t look up again until much later. Same thing this morning.

Part of composing is knowing when to stop and let the ideas go back to wherever they live and grow to gestate further.

So I have managed two days of composing sketches. I have always thought of composing as “making up stuff.” That’s how it feels to me. So far in my musical life my well of ideas for improvising is something that does not seem to go dry. If I sit down at a piano or organ I somehow always have something to say musically. Granted it’s not always particularly profound or earth shattering, but it is always fun.

And I can remember after listening to a composition being performed the distinct interior emotional/psychological reaction/pleasure: “I made that up.”

Armed Good Guys? ‘The Reality of a Firefight Is a Form of Madness’ – The New York Times

This is a letter to the editor from Edward W. Wood, Jr. in Denver, Colorado. It says something that I often think even though I have never been in the situation.

The reality of a firefight is a form of madness: shifting silhouettes, dimly perceived, pop of weapons, freezing fear, trembling hands, most of all the stink: sick, sweet odor of blood mixed with the odor of feces and urine, stale sweat, cordite. Who and where is my enemy?

I did something a bit out character yesterday. I mounted a new towel rack in the kitchen. The old one was covered with plastic and was falling to pieces. This caused me to think that little bits of plastic were possibly falling into food as I prepared it near this stupid rack. We bought a new rack months ago. It’s been sitting in the kitchen in a box. I noticed it yesterday and decided to attack it. I love YouTube. I found some helpful ideas there and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of putting it up.

I have been writing a daily blog entry for many years.  It occurs to me that this is a good discipline and has probably helped me focus and clarify my own ideas for myself. I have been feeling the loss of doing any composing. I mentioned yesterday a couple of contests that I’m probably not going to enter. One reason is that the way they are set up is too incestuous for me. Instead of encouraging innovative thinking from a wider context, the judges want to get a look at the applicants resume and previous work. I’m probably just old and cranky but this seems to suggest that they want to make sure applicants are using musical language they approve of which to my way of thinking is the opposite of innovative creative thinking.

I’m probably wrong about this, but it’s colors the contest for me. But the most important reason I’m not entering is that my chops are rusty from disuse. The creative energy I need to write well is related to not being burned out and having some perspective. You know, all that stuff I’m not really doing well lately.

So,  I’m thinking of adding to my daily regime a daily musical sketch. I usually don’t talk about this sort of thing because it tends to sabotage my motivation and I end up not doing it. But I see this as a bit more mundane like daily practice, blogging or treadmilling.

Leonard Ciampa interviews Peter Krasinski in the July issue of the AGO magazine. I can’t link you in since the AGO weirdly keeps its magazine behind firewalls.

If you don’t recognize these names, don’t worry, neither do I. They are bigwigs in the organ world I guess. On his website, Ciampa has a quote from the Boston Globe about him being a “genius” so there you are.

Anyway, I like what Krasinski says about improvising. He says that he thinks many improvise either mostly using their head or their heart. If they use their head, the music is academically correct but dull, if they use their heart they may be making good music but it’s more intuitive than informed.

I think what I’m trying to do in my composition efforts right now is prime the pump of my heart since that’s where my ideas come from: inspiration.

I stepped on a dead bat in the living room yesterday. This makes me unhappy as I try to release them when they are trapped in the house. We were cleaning because Eileen is meeting with a rep from our health insurance company to discuss what to do when I turn 65 this year. I feel slightly guilty that Eileen is taking care of this for me, but she seems okay with it.

I  think I am struggling to relax into summer. I am contemplating submitting a composition proposals to the AGO, one for choral and one for organ. The submission is rather involved and requires a description of the proposed composition, a resume, and previous compositions. This is probably more than I have in me at this point especially since the deadline for all of this is July 1 of this year.

I have had some ideas rattling around in my head. Unfortunately they haven’t been for choral pieces and my organ writing seems to be going nowhere right now. Nevertheless composing would be an excellent relaxing (and fun) summer activity for me if I can muster the motivation.

Greek is going well. I’m in a challenging stretch but it is rewarding. I’ve just about finished reading King Lear and am thinking of reading Timon of Athens next. Eileen may have sold her loom. She has been talking to some people from Southern Indiana who are very interested in it.

Today Eileen will go exercise before the insurance rep arrives. I will do the farmers market attend a short staff lunch, probably meet with Jen. My student left a voice mail that he wants to meet later in the day. So maybe that’s what we’ll do.

Sonia Sotomayor’s Epic Dissent Explains What’s at Stake When the Police Don’t Follow the Law | The Nation

John Nichols take on recent ruling.

Facebooger ruined my first attempt at yesterday’s blog post by deleting a meme I wanted to write about. Eileen and I can’t exactly figure out why. Neither of us can remember the meme exactly, but it was an anti-Trump one. What caught my attention was the vituperative comment a high school friend put on the meme defending Trump.

I thought I should respond because the comment was full of misinformation and misunderstandings. Bad information and reasoning are threatening are democracy right now.  At least I think so. I wrote a response to my friend without posting it, deciding as I often do to let some time pass before sharing my reaction and ideas. This helps me.

So when I returned to it yesterday morning, the meme was still in my browser. Unfortunately as I began to look through Facebooger for a bit larger version of it, it (the meme, the comments, the whole shebang) went away. Now Eileen (who also saw the meme) and I cannot determine in our own minds what caused Facebooger to exert this censorship. Was it the meme itself? Since we can’t remember exactly the content, it could be that it went over the top. Was it my friend’s comment which was not obscene but full of incendiary words that might flag it on Facebooger? Words and phrases like “one world government crowd” and “Donald Trump is admired and even loved by those who know him.”

Who knows? It’s just a tiny little mystery which confused me enough that I didn’t put in the blog yesterday.

I did, however, spend several hours writing a bulletin article for this next Sunday’s Eucharist. Rev Jen and I have been talking about how unfocused the beginning of our Eucharists are at Grace. Rev Jen thinks we may have swung too far on the pendulum from a “me and Jesus” quiet moment before worship to loud and extended conversations that create chaos.

When Jen brought this up to me, I said that one idea would be to suggest (via bulletin notes?) how this time has changed in worship. Previous to the liturgical reforms and its evolved understandings, the prelude time was often a time to come very quietly into church and pray while soft music was playing. Now I am not that bothered by the rambunctiousness because I understand the beginning of the service as a process of gathering community which some silly liturgists say begins when one awakes on Sunday morning and starts getting ready to go. Those silly liturgists make sense to me.

But the gathering does not necessarily need more than a greeting to each other. What then, I asked Jen, shall we teach people to do at this time? I suggested encouraging them to greet each other then sit and prepare for Eucharist. I think it would be good to encourage them to look at the readings for the day. These readings are available to parishioners in leaflets. They could look over the bulletin and begin to see how the service is usually built around ideas in the readings and the specific feast. They could, of course, listen to the prelude.

I have been thinking about how wonderfully Leonard Bernstein helped listeners understand and appreciate music. I often notice that not many people seem to be zeroing in on what I am doing at the organ. Many times what I am performing are wonderful pieces of music. Why not help people or at least provide them with a window into the profundity that is often happening in their vicinity? This is what I’m attempting in next Sunday’s bulletin note. I see it as a very small step toward what Jen and I have been discussing. Here’s a link to what I am emailing the office this morning. I think it’s pretty good.

A Tale of Two Parties – The New York Times

Krugman thinks there’s a difference between the two political parities in the USA. He could be right.

Cathleen Schine’s ‘They May Not Mean To, but They Do’ – The New York Times

This looks like an interesting read to me.

A. B. Yehoshua: By the Book – The New York Times

This is worth reading and noting books that this guy recommends. It’s a bit more thoughtful and informed than this column often is.

I did make Salata Mese for us after church yesterday. I only used half of the cheese and marinaded veggies so we can have it again today if we want.

At church, Jen announced that our curates have a gig at St. Philip’s, Beulah, Michigan. I think this is their last week. Jen announced we would honor them next week. I’m hoping they don’t seek a pow wow with Jen and me this week. The last few weeks have clarified for me how far apart our understandings of church and liturgy are. It would be difficult to talk to them constructively and helpfully about that at this point. But we’ll see.

I am continuing to enjoy learning about Aristophanes. I have started slowly reading the scholarly edition of The Clouds that I own in Greek. There are about 120 pages of introductory material before you get to the actual text of the play itself. They are written in typical dense, meaning-packed, scholarly prose and i find myself looking up words.

So far I have looked up stemmatology (the study of the transmission of texts, esp. in manuscript form), doxographer (a writer who collects and records opinions of the Greek philosphers…. doxa – opinion… grapher…. writer), and scholion (an explanatory note esp. on ancient Greek or Latin writers… schole …. Greek for “school”).

Sheesh!

Eileen and I went to the Farmers Market yesterday. We bought kale, eggs, strawberries, spinach, asparagus, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash, onions, and lettuce. After we came home I crushed and sweetened the strawberries from our previous trip and we used them to make strawberry shortcake (with store bought sweet cake).

Then I parboiled the cauliflower, zucchini, and some green beans from the freezer. My plan is to make Salata Meze (Greek Salad) with them. First the cooked veggies need to marinade. Then I will lay out rinsed lettuce and spinach, dump the cooked veggies on it, top with sliced onions and tomatoes. On top I will put some locally made feta cheese which we bought with this salad in mind.

Here’s a link to an online recipe that is very similar. Like my original recipe, this one calls for black olives. I have always made it without them because no one I was cooking for but me liked them.

I did the Mary library trip after that while Eileen did dishes. Dishes has evolved into my job, but she asked me if I wanted her to do them while I was cooking. I responded with a hearty yes! But I still got up this morning and washed up the few dishes left from last night.

While at the library I not only turned in Mom’s old books and found her some new ones, I also checked out the book Anne McKnight thought I should read, Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr.

I’m not necessarily planning on reading it. A cursory glance vindicates my comment to McKnight that much of the self help stuff is thinly veneered wisdom that is already present in more unadulterated way in the culture.

I can’t help but gently notice that in our hour together she typecast me as someone interested in spirituality. If that is true, her definition of it differs from mine.

Eileen dropped me off near the church and I  prepared for today. I also picked out some music to perform a week from today. We are singing “If Thou but Suffer God to Guide Thee,” which is sung to the wonderful chorale “Wer nur den lieben Gott”. At least that’s my recommendation to my boss. I am planning to play a couple of settings by Bach for the prelude and another one by Harold Vetter for the postlude. They won’t require much prep and that’s partly what I’m looking for right now.

Christo’s Newest Project: Walking on Water – The New York Times

This is a very cool installation in Italy which is open to the public through July 3. The saffron fabric is buoyed up so that one can walk on it. There are no guard rails.

Home Should Not Be a War Zone – The New York Times

Written by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a voice of sanity in a society gone mad.

The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

Additional history…. stuff I did not know.

We had a full church for last night’s service of remembrance for the victims of Orlando. Participation was good. As usual, I didn’t hang around afterwards, but we did receive many comments on the music even from profs who are usually pretty reticent.

I spent an hour or so transcribing the opening and closing hymn so that the string players played on the prelude; the opening hymn; the taize chant, Ubi Caritas, interspersed in the reading of the names of the dead; the closing hymn; and the postlude. There was only one hymn that they didn’t play on which I accompanied on piano.

I’m still feeling the sense of accomplishment and exhilaration I mentioned yesterday about beginning work on a chapter in my Greek text that quotes from Aristophanes’s The Clouds. I found myself picking up my Greek in the afternoon yesterday out of sheer enjoyment.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Beethoven, revisiting his Bagatelles and Piano Sonatas. His clarity seems to be just the ticket for me right now.

Eileen has decided to get rid of her big loom. It is beautiful but it’s too big for her weave comfortably on it. She put it up on Facebooger yesterday.  She’s a a member of active Weaving groups there so it’s not impossible that someone will be interested in it.

In prepping for last night’s service, I had a nice chat with my boss. There was a funny moment when as we were working on this emotionally charged service which we both have ambivalence about, she told me that she was planning to pay me for doing the service. I teared up and so did she. Then while weeping, I asked her if she felt as stupid as I did. I pointed out that I was moved to tears by being told I was going to be paid. How dumb is that. I think we both found that funny.

A Brief History of Attacks at Gay and Lesbian Bars – The New York Times

Raillan Brooks, associated editor of the Village Voice, mentioned this article in this week’s On The Media broadcast in which he appears. He is a gay Muslim. Brooks Gladstone got my attention with this quote from a recent article he wrote:

“What results from this noxious brew of misread history and flawed assumptions — liberal self-congratulation, LGBTQ political complacency, past and present colonial statecraft — is Orlando: People like me were massacred for who they were, and people like me get blamed for it because of who they are. Neither side realizes it’s being played against the other.”

Raillan Brooks

That is a fine bit of prose and made me want to read the whole article. here’s the link:

Double Jeopardy: Queer and Muslim in America | Village Voice

On The Media also interviewed Dahlia Lithwick about the following article on the Second Amendment. More good stuff.

How the NRA perverted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

I haven’t read this yet, but Lithwick gives a clear and nuanced understanding of the history of this stuff on the podcast.

Although I am still working on the final grammar exercises from the fifth chapter of my Greek text, this morning I crossed into chapter six. There is a lot of background reading suggested and I began doing some of that. But I could not resist afterwards turning to the first line of the new study text excerpt.

I managed to translate on sight the first line. As i did so I was under the impression that it was from the original play, The Clouds, by Aristophanes. I was exultant. However despite the text informing the student that from now on “for the most part, you will be reading continuous extracts from single works, rather than collations of sources,” it turns out not to be part of the original play.

I looked through my books and discovered that I have a critical edition of the entire play in Greek with critical notes for the English reader by K. J. Dover.

That’s how I discovered that the first line of the text fell under the rubric, “for the most part,” instead of part of the continuous extract of the original text.

I am still a bit exultant. My study of Greek is moving about three times slower than it suggests to move. Of course the suggestion is not for someone like myself working alone with texts but for classroom use. Presumably that would be much quicker and more intense.

Despite my reservations about church these days, I invited my piano trio members to come and play at this evening’s service of remembrance for the victims of the Orlando shooting. They quickly said they were interested. I phoned my boss to ask her if it was a good idea and she was enthusiastic. So we will play some CPE Bach and my own arrangement of “There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit” tonight or at least that’s the plan as of now. I believe Jen (my boss) cut short her vacation to come back last night. I spoke to her on the phone while she was driving home. She will finalize the program sometime this morning.  I have already submitted these two pieces for it and am planning on adding cello and violin to at least the Taize “Ubi Caritas” which Jen and her cleric cohorts have decided should be sung between the reading of the names of the deceased.

My mixed feelings about this have not evaporated but they will not be an impediment to doing the service as well as can.

Lord knows, I have mixed feelings about any Christian ritual or prayer these days.

I linked in yesterday’s blog to Facebooger and quoted the main part of my sermon of the day. I was surprised that so far the reaction there has been all positive and larger than I expected. There didn’t seem to be an uptick to visits here according to Google Analytics.

I have interrupted my morning reading at the point of finishing up my Greek so that’s all for today.

China Imposes Blackout on Hong Kong Bookseller’s Revelations | TIME

I have been following this disturbing story both because it involves booksellers and a country possibly sending agents into another country to kidnap people and bring them to China.

It seems to be sinking in that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the 2016 Presidential election in the USA. There are signs that the media is changing its approach. A Trump  rally interrupted by cutting to a Clinton speech. Not only referring to Trump as a demagogue but explaining what he is doing that shows that. Unfortunately many people who are frightened by and detest him are blind to what he represents.

And what he represents is something that has irrevocably changed in the United States. Trump, to my way of thinking, is only possible because he is reflecting what many people understand about our way of life. Granted it seems that these understandings are not accurate and even cross the border to immoral, but unfortunately they have been stoked by the perfect storm I mentioned Signer describing in a previous blog post.

You can only ride the tide of stoked false hatred of the Clintons and Obama for so long. Eventually it turns on the entire system and destroys it. You can only reduce journalism to entertainment for so long. Eventually journalism itself is effectively removed from the situation and there is no reliable information with which to understand ourselves and our country. You can only suck our education system dry of funding and content for so long. Eventually, a populace of confused and mistaken people will surface a leader to destroy our country and turn it into something else.

We are perilously close to this situation right now in the United States. One can only hope we can pull back from the precipice not only by not electing a demagogue, but by addressing the evil in our society which has called him forth.

End of sermon.

I am still in the throes of burnout. It seems that my work has been draining and stressing me when I need to recover my balance. Tomorrow night there will be an ecumenical service to honor those killed in Orlando recently. I have consented to help with the music but only barely. My boss asked me. I told her in an email that all things religious have left me feeling very disconnected lately but that I would do this service.

I should add a caveat here that I continue to read Howard Thurman and find him refreshing and religious at the same time. He does this by talking about the radical genius of Christianity embodied in the person of the “poor Jew,” Jesus. But despite this, how Christianity has not only failed the disinherited but has exploited and repressed them.

It was in the pages of Thurman I learned that one of the most popular English slave ships was named, “Jesus.” Wow.

I continue to marvel that Thurman’s book, Jesus and the Disinherited, was published a few years before I was born. Its pages burn with relevance to the now of our moment in this country. At least they do for me.

Study Calls Snub of Obama’s Supreme Court Pick Unprecedented – The New York Times

It’s a new time in the USA.

Janet Waldo, Voice of Judy Jetson, Dies at 96 – The New York Times

I didn’t know the Jetsons only had one initial season which was simply repeated until 1986 when a new one was done.

It’s another pleasant morning on my porch. It has been trying to rain and is overcast. However, I can hear birds bravely singing in the morning.

I have been reading Bernstein’s Infinite Variety of Music. When he was alive, I tended to see him as a bit of talented con artist for some reason (but for all that a fine composer). My opinion was probably colored by conservative American music academics who would write him off as far too flamboyant. His European colleagues seem to get along with him better.

But now, reading his introduction called “An Open Letter” (link to pdf), I find his perceptions amazing.  Basically he predicts a return to tonality in music. He describes chance music and twelve tone music as musical attempts to emulate what was happening in the other arts, namely a poetical rebellion which he calls non-arts. He says that Waiting for Godot succeeds well as a non-play. Pale Fire by Nabakov is a clever book which purports to be an edition of a poem by a fictional author with all the invented academic footnotes and essays. Bernstein says it works as a non-novel, a “thrilling masterpiece.”

But music is too abstract to become non-music and remain poetically interesting and relevant.

Bernstein confesses  in his 1966 essay he looked more forward to the new Simon and Garfunkel song and would rather listen to the Association sing “Along comes Mary,” than “most of what is being written now by the whole community of avant-garde composers.”

I remember reading this with satisfaction when I first ran across it. At that time, I was happy to find that there were classical musicians like me who enjoyed musics in addition to traditional and contemporary classic music.

This time my attention was more caught by how he introduced this thought: “I am a fanatic music lover. I can’t live one day without hearing music, playing it, studying it, or thinking about it. And all this quite apart from my professional role as a musician. I am a fan, a committed member of the musical public. And in this role (which I presume is not too different from yours, gentle Reader), in this role of simple music lover, I confess, freely though unhappily, that at this moment as of this writing, God forgive me, I have more pleasure in following the music adventures of Simon and Garfunkel….” and so on.

I am also a fanatic music lover. However the moment has changed. It is no longer true in my opinion what Bernstein writes just a few sentences later. “Pop music seems to be the only area where there is to be found unabashed vitality, the fun of invention, the feeling of fresh air.” Popular music has mostly left all this good stuff behind as it commodifies itself and seeks popularity for its own sake.

But vitality, fun, and fresh air still exists. It’s hard to find in the waterfall of music available these days. But it’s there.

And speak of Paul Simon, I am enjoying his new album. I found myself humming words from the title track, “Stranger to Stranger.”

“I’m just jittery. I’m just jittery. It’s a way of dealing with my joy.” As someone seeking to find out if I can benefit from therapy, these lines hit me. Maybe my craziness is being jittery and dealing with my joy of being alive and married to Eileen. That would be cool.

Herman Melville by W. H. Auden

Robert Fagles quotes this poem in his introduction to The Oriestia by Aeschylus (he’s the translator). I liked the line so much I looked up the entire poem. Excellent poem.

here’s the line

Evil  is unspectacular and always human,

Auden, Herman Melville

‘Smoke,’ by Dan Vyleta – The New York Times

Despite panning this book, the reviewer told me enough about it that it looks interesting to me.

Facing the music: conductor Alpesh Chauhan | Music | The Guardian

Interviews like this always interest me.

Is It a Crime to Be Poor? – The New York Times

People are being put in jail for owing money. Welcome to Amerika.

Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder – The New York Times

Another self serving rule brought to you by business and government.

Doctor’s Plan for Full-Body Transplants Raises Doubts Even in Daring China – The New York Times

This is a crazy story. It makes me smile.

I’m sitting on my porch listening to the rain this morning. It was raining harder when I came out here to do my Greek. Now the rain has slowed down, but it still makes a nice sound and a cool damp breeze is moving past my chair.

So my first therapist attempt was a bust. I guess that’s not surprising. What did surprise me is how deflated and depressed it left me. After our session I walked home passing again through the park. It didn’t occur to me until I reached the park how useless my session had been and that I would have to call the therapist and take her up on my offer to keep looking if she and I were not a good fit.

Why weren’t we a good fit? I think the easiest way to think about this is that we lacked very many things in common. Part of this might have been age, but not all. She didn’t recognize very many of my references. John Hartford, Neil Postman and others might well have been before her time. She had the typical mental health care giver’s quiet and reluctance to commit herself to much. Annoying, but understandable. She did recognize Murray Bowen, but not Ed Friedman. Even then, I outlined my understanding of Bowen theory and its origin because she described church as my family “business.” I told her it was more my family system and that led to a bit of discussion (mostly me talking) about that branch of psychology.

I’m not sure about other references I made. Being noncommittal is a basic shrink technique, I would guess. But the main reasons I know she’s not the shrink for me are her own questions and description of our work together. She asked me what the outcome of meeting together would look like to me (honest answer which I gave her: “I don’t know.”). When I said I was rambling on (which I was), she said I wasn’t rambling I was telling her things that I thought were important. She also said that I would find myself looking at myself differently because of what I had talked to her about (wrong).

Finally during the session she asked me if I knew what enneagrams were. Sigh. I told her they reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs evaluation which is sometimes called “Episcopalian Horoscopes.” She laughed.

I told her that for most of these tools one would not have to scrape very deeply to see they are based on broader wisdom and concepts already present in the culture. I see them as useful, but I myself am a suspicious dude when it comes to embracing them.

She quieted down about enneagrams. Then she asked me if I had ever read any Richard Rohr (no). She was surprised. She recommended Falling Upward.

Sigh. Another self help book. And it looks directed at aging people. I guess she saw me as an eccentric older brainy type. I will look at this book. But I’m also planning to call her today and tell her I’m going to keep looking for a shrink.

Sad! — On The Media’s current show

My brother Mark mentioned how much he got out of this episode so I’ve been relistening to it. Micheal Signer has some interesting things to say. I have read his book on Madison and think he has a great mind (and it’s a great book and very pertinent to what is happening in the us right now).

His ideas were so good I synopsize them here for your dining and dancing pleasure:

In a previous show, Signer said

Demagogues thrive when we are cynical about truth.

They start to deflate when we put faith back again in public reason.

This time Signer describes the current “perfect storm” in American politics which is providing an opportunity for a demagogue such as Trump to get elected

1, cultural cynicism about leadership
2. corrosion of civic knowledge among the rank and file
3. media has shirked responsibility as conservator and influence on values of freedom of speech and separation of powers
4. widespread economic anxiety
5. national security fears that Trump seeks to amplify not calm

How Donald Trump Used the Orlando Shooting to Sow Division | TIME

I have a lot of links I haven’t been putting up. This is getting to be a long post so I’m only putting up a few links. This one falls in line with Signer’s ideas.

Why The AR-15 Assault Rifle Used In Orlando Is So Common In Mass Shootings

From International Business Times. Some stats and information.

The Scope of the Orlando Carnage – The New York Times

Frank Bruni has some solid observations.

I had a nice long phone chat with my brother,, Mark, yesterday. He pointed out to me that Google stats don’t count him because he has my new blogs emailed to him without coming on the site. I doubt that many others are doing this but he has a point. Also, as I mentioned to him I don’t trust Google stats to be an accurate count of visits only vague trends.

I asked Mark about Howard Thurman yesterday. His book, Jesus and the Disinherited is one of the books that my church community is reading this summer. It has been stacked in the coffee area for a while. My student, Rudy, noticed it and recognized the author who died in 1981. The book itself began life as an article, “Good News for the Underprivileged” published in 1935 (which doesn’t seem to be online).

I had been ignoring the book. I have an aversion to religiosity which intensifies when I’m burned out.

But after Rudy expressed interest I thought it might be worth a look despite being a religious book.

I’m about half way through the book. It was published in 1949 and the gender language is from that time. But Thurman seems to me to be a brilliant thinker and critic of the church especially in terms of its failure to live up to its radical genius where the dispossessed are concern.

I have often thought that much of my understanding of life was shaped by early direct exposure and a simple literal response to the Jesus of the gospels through bible stories and more importantly bible verses.

So when Thurman starts drumming home the three hounds of hell (as he calls them) “that track the trail of the disinherited” :  fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, using words of Jesus it makes sense to me.

I especially like his stories. He tells one about his grandmother who was born a slave. She could not read or write so the young Howard had the task of reading to her daily from the Bible. As he says, she was very particular about which passages she wanted to hear: certain Psalms, passages from the four gospels. He noticed that she didn’t ask for much from the letters of Paul.

Later when he was “older and half way through college,” “with a feeling of great temerity,” he asked her about it.

“During the days of slavery,” his grandmother told him, “the master’s minister would occasionally hold services for the slaves. Old man McGhee was so mean that he would not let a Negro minister preach to his slaves. Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul.

At least three or four times a year he used as a text: ‘Slaves, be obedient to them that are you masters … as unto Christ.’ Then he would go on to show how it was God’s will  that we were slaves and how, if we were good and happy slaves God would bless us. I promised my Maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible.”

This story hit me particular personally since I can remember as a young man finding some of Paul’s stuff highly unacceptable.

Thurman develops the idea that Jesus was a “poor Jew” all his life. In contrast to this Paul was Roman citizen.

If a guard kicked Paul into a ditch, he had legal recourse and was protected by his position in society. If someone kicked Jesus into a ditch, he was a disinherited person and had no recourse.

Thurman thinks this contributed to Paul’s point of view and I find it convincing.

Also, Jesus was in the position that people in our current society (and Thurman’s society when he was writing) are in, especially people of color and poor people.

In many ways he reminds me of my old hero, Thomas Merton, by speaking in a clear reasonable voice to the entire human not just a captive Christian audience or arena.

Eileen and I cooked out yesterday afternoon. Or at least we attempted to do so. I was grilling asparagus and other veggies when Eileen came out to grill her steak. She noticed there wasn’t any flame. Bah. We ran out of propane. So we finished up in the kitchen. Afterwards we did our daily Mary visit. Then I came home and read in the back yard resting up for my late afternoon wedding.

Fun fact I learned from Alex Ross. Colonel Kink, actually the actor who played him, Werner Klemperer, was the son of the famous conduct, Otto Klemperer.

Besides being an actor, Werner was also an accomplished violinist and pianist. Fun stuff.

It’s not my intention to primarily chronicle the life and times of a working church musician here. But here’s an update. Suffice it to say that last night’s wedding, although successful as a secular celebration of the love of two people, had some bumpy parts from my point of view. The office administrator, the curate and I all had the wrong time for the wedding. At 5 PM, the curate and I were staring at each other and alone in the building. We were expecting the wedding to start then. But the participants had asked to begin at 6 PM. It actually said this in the description in the church calendar entry. I pointed it out to the bride and she was relieved that THEY hadn’t messed up. Sheesh.

This is emblematic of the disconnect of the situation. The wedding went off fine. It was a small but enthusiastic group. They managed to pay attention to the bulletin and follow most participative moments leading me to think that they might possibly have even sung an easy hymn together. But the groom forgot my check so I didn’t get paid. And the curate quickly left afterwards. I turned out the lights and blew out the candles. Another day in the life of a church musician.

My blue mood seems to be lifting a bit. While waiting for people to show up to the wedding I read through more of the Orgelbuchlein. I realize these pieces don’t make much sense to modern listeners. But I find them attractive and interesting if only as historical records of the thought of Bach around chorale tunes of his time. An organist on Facebooger mentioned that he has been doing the same thing: playing his way through the book. That’s encouraging to me: that there are other crazy church musicians out there.

Italian paper criticised for Mein Kampf giveaway – BBC News

Germany’s banning of Mein Kampf (only recently rescinded) has always seemed puzzling to me. I do wish the United States was as remorseful about its sins of slavery and repressing of people as Germany is about its terrible past.

I mentioned here recently that playing Bach at the organ had helped my mood. Yesterday my mood plunged into melancholy. If this is depression, maybe it’s lack of apparent cause in my daily life is an indicator. At any rate, I see my shrink for the first time on Monday. Maybe she will have some ideas.

I once again turned to my beloved music for solace. However, this time it didn’t work. Instead I was reminded of my inadequacies as a  musician. Nice. I am, of course, my own worst critic. But even in my organ practice yesterday, each stumble seemed to mock my life long pursuit of skill.

Sometimes you ear the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.

It was hard for me not to see my evening martini and wine as self medication. My mood was so morose.

I could point to stuff at church as at the very least not helping. Today I have another wedding with the curate. Not only is there no congregational singing planned, one of the curates assured me in an email that she and her husband support the bride and groom in their decision to have no hymns. Discouraging to this old church musician.

Frustratingly it may be the right decision. Maybe this will be a small wedding. Small groups of non church people are difficult to inspire to sing together in worship, that’s for sure.

Again, this blue feeling may be related to simple burnout.

This morning I am less blue. I finished a chapter in Alex Ross’s Listen to This that I purchased on Thursday.

He seems to be addressing some of the same ideas that Ben Lerner was dancing around in his recent short story in The New Yorker, “The Polish Rider.” Ross begins his book thinking about what it means to write about music.

Also, there is an epigraph from Beckett’s novel,  Molloy, which I continue to read. Nice serendipity.

I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck.

Samuel Beckett, Molloy (epigraph to Ross’s book)

In the first chapter which is also entitled, “Listen to This,” Ross outlines his own connection to music. Until the age of twenty he had listened to only classical music. He was passionate about it and even entertained being a composer. But then he began to discover other musics. It’s an interesting story.

He mentions being influenced by Bernstein and sent me back to The Infinite Variety of Music.

Which brings me back to my feelings of inadequacy. I have never fit in to many musical crowds. In my rock and roll youth, I was the weird keyboard player who might have understood music a bit better than the rest of the band but was definitely a bit of a reclusive nerd who not only liked the Doors but also liked Bach and read poetry.

By the time I got to college I was older than most of the other music students and much less skilled. I tried to catch up in skill as quick as possible. Many times it feels to me like I never managed to do this but I keep practicing and improving even at the age of 64.  Also, in the academic setting I was the weird one who was not only interested in Bach but the Doors.

So you can see why I like Alex Ross because he has no problem moving from Bach to the Doors and knows a ton of stuff about all kinds of music.

United Nations Chief Exposes Limits to His Authority by Citing Saudi Threat – The New York Times

The Olive Brings Solidarity and Peace Once Again

Oh year, right! The OLIVE branch.

Commemorating the Reformation for the 500th Time | Reformed Worship

My friend, Peter Kurdziel, thought I might like this article. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read what a Reformed dude thinks about his Lutheran heritage yet but I may.